Give me Hope in the Darkness
by vonPeeps
Summary: AU - what if Sherlock's social skills were actually a result of chronic pain?


Sometimes it comes as a stab of ice to the gut, blinding and harsh. Other times, a slow roil of toxicity flooding through his body with inexorable patience. Today, the pain boils in his core; its heat so intense the fumes float the deductions right out of his head. Today feels like the hated day, the dreaded defeat, the time he has to flee from the morgue in disgrace. No victory, not today.

When it starts, there is no thought, no room for deduction around the edges of escape plans. No smart remarks, no clever retorts, no words at all. Letting Lestrade surge to the fore, slipping back into the shadows. Even the buttressed walls of the mind palace provide no solace when your own body holds you in siege.

_Stop this stop this stop this you're making it worse if you tense up it hurts more just stop it just relax just breathe count it down five four three two one breathe start again five four…_

* * *

Worry spreads through her body, a twitch in her eye. You can't look directly at him when it hits, that just makes everything worse. So she is left with a squint that hurts her brain as much as her eyes; how can you assess the symptoms if you're not allowed to see?

She doesn't know if he remembers the night he told her, pouring out all the worries and the fears to her like she was the skull on his mantle. Definitely not like John this time though, at least there was that. He hadn't… wouldn't… couldn't tell John. Afraid of shattering that carefully cultivated aura of competence. Arrogance worn as a mask, shielding everyone from the poison he sees hiding in his body.

_I wish I knew what to do for him when he gets like this. Maybe if I can clear the room? I'll ask John if he wouldn't mind running for some water for me, Greg is nearly done here anyway. Just need to keep talking for a few minutes more…_

* * *

There is no feeling quite like the hollowness that chases his body up and down the streets of London. The emptiness comes from days and days of grazing, picking, never daring to chance a full meal because a full stomach might summon the monster that lives within.

You can pass it off as an affectation sometimes, isn't it all just transport? And truly, it is bad for the brain, the cavalry charge of anxiety tumbling away all the useful thoughts. Is he sick? Is he hungry? Is it bad? What exactly is wrong with his body? With him?

_Greg is gone John is gone there's only Molly Molly sees me when no one else does Molly knows she knows but she doesn't say anything she just lets me be lets me breathe maybe if I sit down curl up take the pressure away maybe it'll hurt less…_

* * *

Helplessness is a grip on the ankle. Hands tied by your sides, loose enough to move, but nothing useful to be done with them. And there's nothing a doctor hates more than impotence in the face of pain. He's had all the tests, and they all said the same: this is his life now. A fragile balance struck between the pain that dulls his shine, and the prescriptions that dampen everything down, a dull four fifths him.

And really, if she were he, honestly truly she doesn't know what she would choose. Do you sacrifice a part of your soul, that piece of you that makes you feel redeemable, for a life free from the fear of pain? What if the pain is secretly the price for being you?

_He hasn't moved in five minutes. Is he sat like that because it is helping the pain or the thoughts? His hands aren't right for a proper mind palace, pain I reckon. I've got his rescue meds in my desk drawer, if he hasn't moved in three more minutes I'm getting them…_

* * *

First came the work – distraction is a powerful sedative. Take an eight when a six doesn't work any more. Need a ten, when pain bleeds into his thoughts, when even eights can't take the edge off. Stalk the feeling down through the underbrush of life. Push into the work, become a wraith of thought and action. Colder, harder, lack of emotion.

And if all that's left are messy emotions and unpredictability and damnit, knowing that he is so tired, so done with this? Morphine. Cocaine. Heroin. No one understands why he chases the high, the allure of opiates to an exceptional processor. But when you're stoned, _everything_ is distant. Bringing your body under control by losing control, wouldn't that blissful oblivion be wonderful?

_Seven hours in four days that's less than two hours sleep a night if you can get four hours tonight you'll feel better but that means taking the pills and lying down is that cheating when the case isn't solved what about if someone else does the legwork NO it has to be me I have to push through it…_

* * *

She did the reading, knows all the facts, she even went to a support group just to hear other people talk about their lived pain. If you can't fix him, at least fill your toolbox with things to smooth the journey, to ease his ride through life. You can't change him, but you can move you.

That's what people do, isn't it? Mould themselves and bend themselves and twist themselves inside out. That's what you do when you are in love, or a certain kind of love, anyway. If you both orbit around the axis of each other, love is a transformation – not necessarily bad, or hard, just bending with each other's sorrows so that neither one snaps.

_Just walk over, tablets on the bench, glass of water too. Then work at the far bench, he can shout if he needs you but he isn't in the spotlight. He'll feel better when they start to work, and if he doesn't need them at all, then it's not a danger night…_

* * *

Molly. The one person that sees him, knows him. All the way through and down and inside to out. He has laid himself bare, done everything he can to scare her away, and still she stays. She holds. In therapy, six weeks of 'release the pain' and 'test the fear', at least he got a name for this… thing. Unconditional positive regard: acceptance and support, no matter what you say or do.

She is the flame in the dusk that draws him in, stupid moth that he is. But her fire doesn't burn, and it does not destroy. It is the warmth of a hot bath that melts the pain away. It is the heat of the sun through that cold winter window. A log fire inside as the storm blows itself out. He will never say it to her, would never poison her life with the burden he is. But she is his hope.

_Meet her eyes and give her a smile. She sees me and I see her. If that's all I can ever have, then today, I can live with that._


End file.
